About

Hello Kickstarter!

Let us introduce you to Pingbell, our first Kickstarter project and the first smart bicycle bell. Tradition meets innovation with a bike bell smarter than the rest. Just ping your bell and find your bike.

FROLIC studio is located in Amsterdam, and for all the amazing things that living in a bicycle-friendly city offers, finding your bike after you’ve parked it is a daily nightmare. So we built Pingbell to take care of this.

If, like us, you love cycling, (finding) your bike and good design, we think Pingbell will be perfect for you.

Just park and walk away. Your bike’s location is recorded without you needing to do anything.

With a quick glance at the map, you can see where you left your bike. Pingbell also uses Bluetooth Smart to tell you if you’re getting closer or not.

Your ears are awesome at locating things! If you still can’t find your bike, ping it to hear where it is.

Smart doesn’t need to mean intrusive. We’ve simplified the design and user experience so that it fits right into your life without demanding your attention.

When you ping your bike from a distance, Pingbell actually rings itself. This gives a full, rich sound that is a lot more authentic than an electronic beep.

Don’t want to wake up the neighbours? Just blink the light.

And of course Pingbell also functions as a conventional bell, well actually a special bell.
It’s made of brass and the sound is loud and crisp so that everyone can hear you.

The free Pingbell app lets you keep track of multiple Pingbells and even share their locations.

And it will be available for both iOS & Android.

Pingbell comes with tamper-proof screws and a special screwdriver. Once it’s on, jealous types who wish they had their own will have a hard time taking off with it.

The battery’s charge lasts up to one year, and you can easily charge it via USB.

Please note: This is a prototype. How it looks and the functionality we present here are not guaranteed to be reproduced in exactly the same way. That said, it will be very close!

At FROLIC studio we love solving problems. We wanted to tackle this one, so over the course of 24 hours we pushed ourselves to solve it by building a working prototype.
This is how we originally came up with Pingbell.

Check out the original prototype:

Since then, we have partnered up with OrangeRed to take care of the sourcing and manufacturing.
They are the perfect partners to help bring Pingbell to life and get it to you!

Antoine Martinez for his invaluable involvement throughout the Kickstarter preparation -- and just for being an all-round awesome designer.

Artyom Avanesov of Caliibrate for helping to bring the app and logo to life.

Since the beginning of this adventure, we have been dedicated to shipping you the best possible product. Your support means the world to us. You are helping us to bring this idea into the world, and so we would like to:

Risks and challenges

We have spent many months working with our partners to minimize many of the risks involved with manufacturing such a product. We know there will be many more challenges along the way. With our combined experience in product design and manufacturing, we are confident we can overcome any technical problems that may arise. We are committed to making you an awesome product!

SOUND: The bell has a really(!) loud ping and we plan to keep it this way. We are currently finalizing the internal mechanism for the ringing sound (when ringing from your phone). We’ve been able to get a good sound from the prototypes, now we’re working on optimizing this for the manufacturing process.

FORM/MATERIALS/UX: We will do rigorous tests for all the components. This includes the brass bell and its metal parts, the plating, the plastic parts, the electronics, and of course the complete assembly into the final Pingbell. Once all tests are passed, we will open the tooling for production. During these steps slight changes may be made, but we'll only make changes that enhance the product experience.

SHIPPING DATE: We’ve built in some extra padding to account for delays. But solving technical problems sometimes requires a bit more time than originally foreseen, especially with so many parts and suppliers involved. We will do our absolute best to have Pingbell ready to be shipped by the projected dates. However, there is always a risk we need a bit more time to ensure the actual product is of the high quality we strive for.

* We will always be open with you about what's going on, and would love for you to stay involved in the process and give us feedback along the way.

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge €3,000 or more
About $3,372

FROLIC INNOVATION: ‘24h FROLIC’ + 5X PINGBELL + APP

The idea of Pingbell originated from what we call ‘24h FROLIC’, where we give ourselves 24 hours to solve a problem by building a working prototype. Your company might have a particular challenge you want to tackle? We will dedicate a 24 hour sprint in our studio in Amsterdam towards designing a solution to your problem.